social attention Flashcards
social attention meaning
predisposition to attend to social info in our environment
e.g. eye tracking on pictures show attending to faces and social info
e.g. attention to body parts that give info about intention e.g. face, hands, body language
eye trackers - what they measure and what is inferred
records:
- saccades and microsaccades
- fixations
- pupil dilation (altered by emotion, light levels and more - careful inferring)
- glissade (small movement/curve after saccade to focus on exact point aimed for)
infer:
- what captures attention
- what is viewed as important
- underlying cognitions
social cues
help learning social skills
evolutionary - interpreting social behaviour and scenarios allows integration into social group
Kuhl et al (2003) - american infants learning chinese words
32 american infants with english as first language
exposed to chinese words either live or on a TV - audio-visual or just audio
measured ability to learn words measured - using eye tracking to see whether they learnt word pairings with pictures
results = only showed signs of learning chinese words in live - not over a TV
- social interaction
babies and eye focus
first weeks
3 months
12 months
sensitivity to gaze
first weeks = direct attention to eyes in a face
3 months = follow gaze
12 months = direct attention to location of a gaze
study shows newborns sensitivity to gaze
24-120 hour-old babies shown static images of faces
babies gazed longer at face with direct gaze as opposed to averted gaze
eye focus in adulthood
monsters are people too - preference for looking at eyes
role of eyes
high contrast - causes attention in animals
evolved to communicate with eyes
eyes receive and send info
insight into what partners are paying attention to to understand thought processes
reversed polarity and eye gaze
study whether people can still gauge direction of gaze with reversed polarity (e.g. pupil is white and eye is black)
normal polarity = high performance in all conditions of head rotations
reversed polarity = bad judging if gaze is directed at them when face is pointing the other way
gaze cueing
seeing someone moving their gaze we move our gaze so we look the same way - automatic
cueing paradigms
posner-type cueing paradigms
fixate on a face on the screen which will look one of 4 directions ( a gaze cue)
this cue will not actually determine which direction the flash of light will be in, and yet people still follow gaze cues
this slows down response as it misdirects attention even when they consciously know it isn’t correct = gaze cueing effect
real world implications of gaze cues
direct attention to important info
helps plan actions
insight into others intentions
reciprocal eye contact and attention to social info = fit in as member of social group
joint attention = communicate desires and alert to important things, facilitates language acquisition, precursor to ToM development
EEG and ERP to assess social attention
specific ERPs (event related potentials) are associated with certain stimulus
N170 = associated with faces
when shown a face, greater N170 than if shown a house for example
brain regions for social attention (from fMRI)
* attention (3)
* gaze direction (1)
* eye contact and emotion (2)
* facial identity (1)
* ToM (3)
pSTS (posterior superior temporal sulcus), SPL (superior parietal lobule), FEF (frontal eye field
= attention network - areas implicated in goal directed and exogenous attention
aSTS = coding gaze direction
amygdala and hippocampus = eye contact and emotional responses
fusiform gyrus = facial identify recognition
MPFC (medial prefrontal cortex), pSTS, TPJ (temporoparietal junction) = theory of mind processing
fMRI in direct vs averted gaze
when looking at portrait paintings, greater activation in fusiform gyrus to direct vs averted gaze (fusiform face area)
eye tracking shows greater attention to eyes and mouth with direct gaze
eye movements in autism study
different stimuli used: static images, videos, interaction
measures total fixation duration to faces
results = difference in interactive stimuli only between autistic and non - not seen in static images
autistic children don’t prioritise social info whilst non-autistic do this immediately
important for research to consider live situation
direct vs averted gaze in conversations study
track eye movements during conversation
more fixations in person than in video
look at face more when being asked than when replying
more fixations on face and background than body in both states
reasoning:
cognitive load is reduced by averting gaze
turn taking - averted gaze indicates we haven’t finished speaking, direct gaze indicates listening to social partners
social norms - taught to look when someone is speaking to you
social attention and fixations in adult conversation - autism
neurotypical modulate attention whether they’re speaking or listening - flick between looking at them or away to balance socially acceptably
autistic people do this too - similar pattern - but with less face looking overall
factors influencing eye contact and social attention
conversational phase - e.g. talking or listening, asking or replying
social partner eye contact- mimicking them
autism diagnosis
live vs pre-recorded stimulus
Freeth et al (2020) gaze following in real world with autism
experimenter sat across table from participant with a grid of shapes on the table
participant judges where the experimenter was looking on grid - they’d look for 1 second or 5 seconds
measured accuracy by distance from correct block
results:
NT did better on average than autistic but all did better than chance
length of gaze (1 vs 5 seconds) didn’t help either group more or less
both groups had big outliers in both directions
